Do I go listen to the SLSQ perform Messiaen's Quartet for the End of Time tonight after my midterm? The midterm that I've been studying for days for, and is the cause of sleep deprivation, and will likely drain my brain of the ability to have any sentient thoughts afterwards?
Is this a good state of mind with which to go and absorb Messiaen's magnificence?
I like what I have heard of Messiaen, but this isn't one of these pieces to go listen to when one's brain has gone to mush. (Did I also mention I don't like clarinets all that much? Though I have to admit he does use its timbre quite well in this piece.)
Because I could seriously use some "relaxation" or at least decompress for a bit after this exam.
On the other hand, I really need to buckle down and get started on applications to despotic regime programs. (Though the reality is, I won't be in any mood to do this tonight.)
Not to mention, catch up on the econ homework/readings I've blown off to study for this exam that I need to do well on to make up for my lackluster grade on my last exam.
And I could always use a few hours of catch up sleep.
And omg. Read. A book. For pleasure.
But I have also been wanting to go hear this live for a while, and if I miss this performance, I don't know when there will be another live performance of this. (As opposed to Reading. A. Book. For pleasure, which I can theoretically do anytime. If I wasn't up at ungodly hours almost every day, that is.)
If I go, I'd be admitting that I'm going to a classical music concert to decompress.
At the expense of offending those of you who think that one shouldn't listen to classical music to relax/wind down, I have to admit, I do this quite a lot. For exam #1, my calm-my-nerves piece was Brahm's Piano Concerto #2. Right now, I'm listening to Janacek's Glagolitic Mass. To calm my pre-exam jitters. (Actually, the organ part I'm listening to right now kindof echoes my jittery nerves, which is kindof cool.) So nyeh.
So maybe I will just go and catch this performance and "relax" to it, depending on my brain capacity post exam.
And now, I must run off to take that exam.
(I just typed this on the quick while getting ready to go to class, so apologies in advance if this post made no sense (my thoughts seldom do these days) as well as for any spelling and grammatical errors. I'll probably look at this and cringe later.)
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8 comments:
Go, relax. Just forget the title and pretend it's called "Happy Fuzzy Bunny Story Time".
Because if you try to imagine the conditions under which it was written (as well as the subject matter), well...it's not a super-relaxing piece.
But seriously, go. It's a great piece to hear live.
Aagh, I'm too late to weigh in. I was also going to urge you to go; I hope you did.
The very first time I heard that piece was in college at an all-night new-music marathon (organized by some of the people who went on to figure prominently in Bang on a Can). It was about 3:30 in the morning and I was dipping in and out of sleep, the way you do, with my brain constructing weird narratives for what I was hearing, and time getting all fucked up. It was amazing, hallucinatory (possibly as close as I've ever come to the LSD experience), and it gave me a whole new sense of "the end of time."
All of which is just to say that yes, fried brains may be entirely appropriate for this experience.
Wow. All this time, I thought classical music critics are serious, stodgy types who come to concerts donning serious, inscrutable expressions on their faces, furiously scribbling notes. . .(or at least this is what I sometimes envision when I read reviews. Not yours per se, but in general.) If you know what the LSD experience is like, then classical music critics are not as staid as I had imagined. . .
Thanks to both of you for weighing in. I did end up going to hear it. I think I'm glad I went to see it, b/c it sounded surreal and amazing live. (Gladder if I weren't just coming from an impossible exam) Both the piano and clarinet blew me away.
The second half was Messiaen's organ works. About half of it was familiar, but other pieces were new. This too, I enjoyed for the first half, and then thoughts of the exam I had just taken started creeping into my mind. . . However, I was able to decompress and empty my mind of extraneous contents for a while. Would love to experience it again in a less-reverby place, but it made the piano sound ethereal and eerie.
Maybe I'll write about it soon.
Believe it or not (why wouldn't you, I suppose?!) I've never heard the work. Go figure.
I mock the "relax to the classics" CDs only because there's something that bugs me about them, but I think it's absolutely fine to go to a concert to decompress. Why not?
And yes, I sometimes space out at concerts. When I'm on stage it's sometimes a bad idea. Oh well. ;-)
Glad you enjoyed it!
(I miss the...LS...um, nevermind.
I'll never be president.)
Mrs Arepo draws the performers to keep awake during late-night concerts!
Headed to an all-Reich program on Monday. I hope she brings a lot of paper! :)
I would sooner have a person who has done LSD run for president than someone who can't name a few supreme court decisions or defines foreign policy as something deeper than just being across the Bering Straight. And LSD is also far preferred to doing stupid things like having not-sex with people half your age, when you are married. Though I've done my share of stupid things, too, which is why I won't ever run for a political office, either.
Oh, I dislike those CDs, too, as well as music stations that keep equating music with being on some island of (in)sanity. It really dumbs down classical music IMO.
I'm so glad you went. The Messiaen isn't performed all that much on account of the irregularity of its forces and its extreme difficulty, so I always jump at the chance, myself! I've played it a few times...it's so hard, but you can't help practically expiring with bliss.
Oh, the cello line was lovely! I usually try to catch stuff that is rarely performed (I guess this quartet is one such piece?), but that night I was so brain dead. . ..
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